Sketches capture Cleveland's best side: Connie Schultz

Four years ago, Julia Kuo moved from Los Angeles to Cleveland. To her surprise, she quickly fell in love.

Like most people swept up by romance, she wanted the whole world to know why she was always walking around with a grin on her face for no apparent reason.

At 25, she is a talented artist who has already illustrated several children's books and numerous stories for The New York Times. Her heart speaks through her art, and so it made sense -- to her, anyway -- to start posting online sketches of her beloved.

Her blog is titled "100 Days in Cleveland." It is a valentine to the object of her affection, which happens to be our city. Every day, she posts another drawing, along with a short narrative, of something she cherishes about the Cleveland area.

"I wanted visual reminders of what I love about living here," she told me during an interview at the Cedar-Fairmount Starbucks in Cleveland Heights. "I'm an explorer by nature, and there is so much in Cleveland to see, and to love."

Kuo is a first-generation American, born to Taiwanese parents. She came to Cleveland after American Greetings offered her a job, before she had even graduated from Washington University.

She worked as a designer at American Greetings for 21/2 years, then decided it was time to shed the security of a steady job and pursue drawing full time. She supports herself as a freelance illustrator.

The blog, she said, is her chance to live every artist's dream. With one big caveat.

She remembers an art professor who once said, 'Someone should pay me to draw everything I see. "

I discovered Kuo's blog about a week ago through a friend, and was immediately hooked. It wasn't just her talent that pulled me in. It's her clear affection for the town I love.

She has the newcomer's willingness to forgive our stumbles and embrace our best intentions.

My friend, Diane Linch, who is also an artist and has become a fan of the blog, describes Kuo's paintings as "honest, not cute."

Perfect description. They are simple, and true. They also telegraph a steadfast gratitude. Kuo is telling a love story, one sketch at a time, capturing the montage of tradition and quirkiness that makes so many of us dog-loyal to this town.

Kuo's drawings are also a reminder of the importance of focus: We are what we choose to see. I look at her sketches and think about a recent conversation I had with one of our kids, when I said, "We can have a good day, or a bad day, depending on which list we want to keep."

I like Kuo's list. A lot.

Her blog is full of images unique to Cleveland: Loganberry Books on Larchmere Boulevard, Hot Sauce Williams on Carnegie Avenue and the Capitol Theatre in the Gordon Square Arts District.

Beneath a drawing of La Bendicion restaurant on West 105th Street, she wrote:

Not a single person spoke English and everyone turned around when we walked in, but we quickly found that the staff [was] all very sweet -- I had the urge to call them "auntie."

Kuo captures the universal moments of life in its minutiae. Two men play chess outside Dewey's Coffee Cafe on Shaker Square. A friend's black-eyed dog named Lucy settles in for a nap. An RTA train bullets toward downtown Cleveland.

Kuo wrote this under two paintings of young children splashing in afternoon puddles:

Every day around 4 pm we start to hear yelling and screaming from the parking lot behind our apartment. There's a group of elementary school kids ranging in color, size and energy levels, who play -- really play -- outside. They charge around with huge sticks and fallen branches, have territorial disputes, and splash each other in the enormous muddy sink hole that fills our lot whenever it rains.

Surely, some of Kuo's neighbors looked at that same scene and saw only mess and noise.

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